Mr. Peter Feeney:

Independents probably suffer more than members of parties. My experience when I used to work in RTÉ is that all the parties have PR machines or communications teams behind them so they would prompt journalists, whereas, even though, as Senator Craughwell says, there is a group of 23 Independents, the members are very diverse, they do not speak in one voice and they do not have PR or communications people working on their collective behalf. It is true that Independents probably do not get as much attention as the parties. It is more than 20 years since I was editor of current affairs, but I know that I would have expected the press people for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin, the Labour Party and the Green Party to be on to me if they felt their people were not getting enough attention.

The Seanad itself needs to collectively push this message among journalists, which is that it is the Upper House and has a very important part to play in the scrutiny of all legislation and that if it they ignore it, they are ignoring an important part of the legislative process and the public are short-changed as a result of that. It is not, however, an issue that has ever crossed my path as Press Ombudsman. We have never had complaints. It would be difficult to see how one could fit any complaints from Members of the Seanad that they are not getting much attention under the code of practice in any case. We only deal with complaints about matters that have been published. As we do not deal with complaints about matters that have not been published, Senators are at a disadvantage from that point.